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George's Letters 

Home 


By George Butnlong ^ ; 

u V 


PREFACE. 


I hope no one gets on to who wrote this bunch 
for I am anxious to finish the winter here to find 
out how I get along. George Bumlong is not my 
real name, but it should be, as I am both a bum- 
mer and a lunger. I hope under the disguise of a 
nom-de-plume I may escape the punishment the 
writer of these letters deserves. If anyone is next, 
forgive me and keep mum. 


The Author. 


TZ* 

.■£372 

Cyjl 


the library of 

CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Received 

JUL 33 1903 

Copy Entry 

a - . %0~ t o[ D b 

CLASS ^ XXc, No. 

£ 8- vT ~L 3> 

COPY B. 


Copyright by 
George Bumlong 
1903 


Saranac Lake 

ALLEN 1. VOSBURGH, Publisher 
1903 


GEORGES 
LETTER 5 


The Adirondacks, October 12th f 1902. 

Dear Bill:— 

Here I am in the Adirondacks sent by my New 
York physician on account of being slightly run 
down, not a thing wrong, you know, only just 
run down from too much work. I find it is an er- 
ror to consider the Adirondacks a place for pul- 
monary troubles. They are no such thing; there 
are a lot of sick people here but none of them have 
anything out of order with their bellows, and none 
of them are very sick. 

I had a bully time the day I arrived; left New 
York at 7:35, hot night; packed my overcoat in 
trunk and kept on light flannels. I was waked up 
at six a. m. near the station by a lot of people 
who must have had bronchitis, all coughing like 
thunder. I asked a man what made him cough so 
much. He said he had throat trouble. 

I looked out of the window — snow — nice pros- 
pect, low shoes, open work socks, light clothes, 
summer flannels, no overcoat and snow. It made 
me wish for a booth in the Waldorf and a small 
bunch of extract of rye on the table near me. 
Same night I came out in high shoes, woolen 


GEORGES 
LETTER 5 


socks, fur coat, — I like these fur coats; makes you 
think you have money— and a regular winter out- 
fit. In half an hour we were having a thunder 
shower. The lightning change acts by the 
weather are in the very first class. Since I have 
been here we have had our share of rain, about 
six and seven-eights days out of the week. But I 
will tell you what, Bill, rain or no rain the climate 
here is to the good, and the air is as dry as you 
are in the morning after an evening with the boys. 

I spent the biggest part of the first day in 
looking over the bargains to be had in booze. 
They do sell some here in spite of the fact that 
people who have throat trouble must not use it. 
I believe there is something wrong with my 
throat, Bill, it is a trouble I have had for some 
years— a dryness. I do my best not to let it get 
too dry, but it will do it. 

My second day I lit out to look for board. 

I said to a man, ‘ Can you direct me to a 
boarding house?” 

He says. ‘Yes.” 

I said, ‘‘Where.” 

He said, “Everywhere.” 

I said, “Thank you, what street is that on?” 

He said, “Every street ” 

I said, “Corner of what Avenue?” 

He said, “Every Avenue.” 


I met another man and said, “Can you tell me 
where I can get board?” 

He said, “All over.” 

I said, “Of course, did you think I wanted to 
board an arm or a leg? Where is there a house 
where I can get board all over?” 

He said, “Let me see, there is A’s, B’s, C’s, D’s, 
E’s, F’s, G’s, H’s, I’s, J’s, K’s, L’s, M’s, N’s, 0’s, 
P’s, Q’s, R’s, T’s, ” — 

I stopped him and said, “Send me to T’s; they 
may trust.” 

I said, “How many are there here that don’t 
keep boarders?” 

He said, “All those who board.” 

I said, “I think I will go in the business; it 
must be good.” 

I went to see Mrs. T. 

A very pretty young lady let me in and said, 
“Are you looking for board?” 

I says, “Yes, have you got any?” 

She said, “We have. It is a lovely day, is it 
not?” 

I said, “Yes, does that lower your price any?” 

She said, “I don’t know, but will ask Mrs. T.” 
Then she said, “Are you sick?” 

I said, “No.” 

She said, “We would like to have you here, 
and I will be nice to you if you will come.” 


GEORGES 
LETTER S 


GEORGES 
LETTER S 


I said, “I guess I will under those conditions. 
How long have you boarded here?” 

She said, “I don’t board here; I am the lady 
who waits on the table.” 

I said, “In that case, will you kindly con- 
descend to tell Mrs. T. there is a gentleman here 
who w T ould like to see her for a moment.” 

She said she would if Mrs. T. was not up 
stairs, in which case I would have to call her my- 
self, as she, the young lady, was not very strong. 

Mrs. T. was found ironing out the hot cakes 
that they had had for breakfast to get them in 
shape for supper. 

I said, “Have you room for any more board- 
ers?” 

She said, “Yes, what kind of a room do you 
want?” 

I said, “First floor, front.” 

She said, “We have one for thirty dollars a 
week.” 

I said, “That’s too cheap, can you direct me 
to the Holland House?” 

She said, “I will direct you to the station 
house if you get fresh.” 

I said, “Don’t bother, madam; I’ll find it my- 
self before long.” 

Then I lit out. 

I went to four other hash foundries but could 
not get suited, so made up my mind to start one 


of my own. I got; a house after a day’s hunt with 
seventeen real estate agents, and also got my eyes 
opened to some things I was not wise to before. 

Never will your uncle buy any property in 
New York City; it is not in it for a second. A two 
story frame cottage here, rents for a little more 
than a brown stone front on Fifth Avenue, and 
don’t cost so much to build either. Smaller cot- 
tages with four rooms and a bath, are about the 
same price as an eight room apartment in the 
Majetstic. No more large buildings in New York 
for me. Give me a half a dozen cottages here and 
you and I will take a steam yacht and call on 
Teddy, the VII, as we promised. 

One thing I like about this place is, there are 
no autos or benzine buggies up here. I don’t 
know why unless it is because the roads are too 
good. There is one here they call the Sanitarium 
Road, and if every anything in the world reeded 
to get in the “San” and be cured, this road is it. 
It is the sickest thing I ever saw. There is a bus 
here that runs to the Sanitarium and if anyone is 
not sick when they leave town for there, they are 
when they arrive, and have to stay a week to pre- 
pare for the trip back. There must have been a 
corner in springs when the bus was built. I know 
there was some kind of a corner where I was for I 
sat on it. 

I went down to the Postoffice last night. 


GEORGES 
LETTER S 


GEORGES 
LETTER S 


Everyone goes there; that is, everyone who don’t 
have a temp. Temp, is the Adirondack for tem- 
perature. Did you ever see the entrance to the 
White House in Washington? Well, the entrance 
to our Postoffice would remind you of it. There 
is one swinging door about two feet wide to 
go in by and the same door to go out by. I went 
to go in as another man came out and my nose 
hit the door. The door was not hurt; only 
scorched a little* Then, when I went to go out 
another man came in; the result was the same. 
You have to lay low and watch your chance. 
There it another door but I guess it is here for 
its health and don’t work. 

My doctor up here says I am to drink milk, eat 
eggs, don’t work and don’t drink booze. I don’t 
think it is a good plan to follow the doctor’s ad- 
vice in all things, do you? I have to sit out on the 
porch all day, all kinds of days. 

I sat out the other day and got alongside of a 
fine looker, but her think-tank was out of repair, 
and her conversation ran on a single track with 
no turn-outs. Her cough, her temp, her troubles, 
her symptoms, and a lot more her was the limit. 
1 thought it was funny with eight or ten men in 
the joint, to let me, a new entry, get next to the 
best looker in the female part of the house. I got 
chesty for a minute; thought my looks were such a 
much that they all gave way to me, but I re- 


covered quickly. I gave her the ice-house gaze 
the next a. ra. and steered clear. The doctors 
should put her off by herself if they don’t want 
men to drink. She drove me to it, which is the 
only good thing she did all day. 

Speaking of single track, reminds me that 
there is a railroad up here called the Chateaugay, 
and it can give you the gayest shatter you ever 
had. When you have reached your station, you 
not only have to collect your valises but your 
arms and legs as well, which are likely to bo 
strewn all over the cars from the shaking you get. 
The day I rode on it there was a man on the train 
with a wooden leg and 1 was afraid I might get it 
in the scramble. 

Will close now, with regards to all the boys. 
As ever. 


GEORGES 
LETTER « 


Yours, 


George. 







GEORGES 
LETTER & 


The Adirondack^, November 1st, 1902. 
Dear Bill: — 

I am it. I am the real goods. I am a manu- 
facturer of hash; a manipulator of codfish cakes; 
an exponent of the gentle art of doing who I can; 
in other words, I have a boarding house. 

I got steered up against an employment 
agency, and said to the lady in charge, “Please 
send me a good cook and a good waitress.” 

She said, “We are a little short on cooks, but 
I will see what can be done.” 

After waiting a week a lady came up to the 
house and said she was the real thing for cook- 
ing. 

I said, ‘ What is your price to cook in this 
joint?” 

She said, “Forty per month.” 

I said, “Will you oblige me by taking the 
house and letting me cook?” 

She went. 

Another one floated up and said she would 
cook for twenty-five. 

1 said, “How often do you want to go out?” 

She said, “Every night and twice on Sun 

days.” 


GEORGES 
BETTER $ 


I said, “Do you have many callers?” 

She said, “A few gentlemen.” 

I said, “What are your days at home, and 
how often do you give an afternoon tea?” 

Then she went. 

I finally got a cook who only went out three 
nights a week. Then I got a waitress who said 
she would invite me to any parties she might give, 
and would not require grape fruit more than four 
mornings a week. 

The first day I gave my boarders some oysters 
on the half and when I found out the price, I put 
them on the bill of fare as “Solitaires on the 
Deep.” One boarder said I should have said “Sol- 
itaries on the Deep.” I am very saving so I kept 
my oyster for a stew on Wednesday, 

The first applicant I had for board was an old 
fricassed hen with a hemlock plank shape. 

She said, “Have you rooms?” 

I said, “Yes ma’am, I have everything I can 
have.” 

She said, “Bugs?” 

I said, “Well, I don’t know, I used to think 
not, but since I have been in this business I am 
not sure.” 

She said she wanted the best room I had and 
a first class table. 

I said I had both for twenty-five dollars per 
week. 


She said her figure was eight dollars, 

I said, “Madam, you paid too much for for it, 
gome one stuck you; it is not worth more than a 
dollar and a half.” 

She said she would split the difference and call 
it ten dollars. I told her I had a nice room in the 
annex for ten. She asked where the annex was, 
and I told her in the woodshed. I told her there 
was a nice stable on Broadway where she could 
get a stall for ten dollars. She said I had her 
stalled, and left. 

The next applicant was a male man, not a 
postman but a real man 

He said, “I like that twelve dollar room but I 
require tenderloin steak three times a day.” 

I told him he could have it if he was saving 
with the slice he had for breakfast.” 

One man who came for board said, “How 
often do you have a roast?” 

I said, “Everytime 1 meet one of my board- 
ers.” 

He said, “Rare or well done?” 

1 said, “Done to a turn if it is a female.” 

A woman who eats my hash asked me yester- 
day, how often I had chicken. 

I said, “Every time I open a farmer’s fresh 
egg-” 

Speaking of eggs reminds me of a good thing 
I got yesterday. Strictly fresh eggs were selling 


GEORGES 
LETTER 5 


GEORGES 
LETTER «S 


at the stores for fifty cents a dozen. A chap came 
along with nine dozen that he wanted to sell for 
thirty-five per and I took them. When I looked 
them over I found a card in the bottom of the box 
marked, “Packed by Swift & Company. ” There 
are a lot of chaps up here who go around with 
hard luck stories and some eggs in a basket. They 
give you a song about Papa having been killed by 
being hit in the throat with four gallons of cheap 
booze, and Mama having a mortgage to pay on 
the farm, so Mama is raising eggs. All of them 
buy eggs from the cold storage joints and make a 
nice little profit of about twenty cents per dozen. 

I went down to the coal yard yesterday. The 
coal man is the only one in town, so you have to 
be polite to him, and as nice as possible. 

I said to him, “Can you send me up an ounce 
of coal?” 

He said, “No, but I can let you have half an 
ounce.” 

I said, “Will you trust me?” 

He said, “Who can you refer to?” 

I said, “J. Pierpont Morgan, Chauncey Depew 
and Teddy Roosevelt. Will you give me thirty 
days?” 

He said, “No, you can get them at the Town 
Hall. I will give you thirty seconds.” 

I said, “I am sorry I didn’t have another 
good reference; I might have gotten a minute.” 


Tomorrow will see yours truly climbing one 
of the mountains with a large axe oyer each shoul- 
der, a hatchet in each hand, and crosscut saw in 
his pocket. To the woodpile for your uncle. 

A woman asked me yesterday why I never 
had lobster. I told her I was the only live one in 
town and the rest of the boarders couldn’t spare 
me just yet. 

Some of my boarders make me very weary. 
They spring such second hand jokes on a fellow. 
A thin shad who boards with me lost the key of 
his door a few days ago. After breakfast this 
morning I went into the parlor to see that no one 
had swiped the piano and found all my collection 
of feeders were there wearing out the furniture. 

The thin shad said, “Did you find my key?” 

I said, “No, someone must have eaten it 
even though it was brass.” 

He said, “I don’t blame them if the steak they 
had for breakfast was as tough as mine was.” 

What do you think of the jay? The next 
steak he gets in the grab-bag at breakfast will be 
off of the skirt, and not a velvet one either. 

They are fearful feeders, these people of mine. 
A few days ago we had ham and eggs for break- 
fast. 

The waiter lady said to one guy, “Ham and 
egg s.” 

He said, “Well, bring me some.” 


GEORGES 
LETTER S 


GEORGES 
LETTER $ 


She said, “Ham or egg?” 

He said, “Both, they have never been di- 
vorced.” 

I sent word back from the kitchen that my 
ham was from Dakota and they had been. He 
told the lady to tell me to marry them again. I 
told her to say that the ham objected on the 
ground that the other party was suspected of 
being a bad egg. He sent out word to tell the 
ham that the egg was old enough to have sown 
his wild oats; if he had not, have him turned over. 
I told the waiter lady to tell him he won by a 
block and could have the house. 

This is a great game to size people up in. If a 
party comes to you daily and kicks about the 
table, you can bet your roll that when he is at 
home they have a big pot roast for Sunday, cut 
it in slices and fry it for Monday’s breakfast, cold 
for Monday’s lunch, warmed over for Monday’s 
dinner, hashed for Tuesday’s breakfast, stewed 
for Tuesday’s lunch, more stew for Tuesday’s 
dinner, and then finish out the week on a big 
shoulder of mutton worked the same way. If a 
chap comes up regularly to growl about the coffee 
and tells you how fine the coffee is he gets at 
the restaurant where he lunches, it is a cinch that 
he has a plate of beans and draw one in a beef 
and beans hotel on Park Row. The young chap 
who finds fault with his room being small and his 


bed poor has a four by six hall bedroom on the 
east side of Harlem for any money you want to 
bet. People that have been used to the real thing 
never kick but once, then if things don’t go right, 
they pay their bill and go. 

I am going out now to look up the nearest 
poor-house so will close. With kindest regards, 
Yours in sorrow, 

George. 


GEORGES 
LEXTER 5 



GEORGES 

LETTER 


The Adirondack^, December 20, 1902. 

Dear Bill: — 

I have become a mighty hunter. I have been 
out with a real gun, a real dog and a real guide. 
I made all the arrangements one nice cool night, 
thirty below zero, and the next morning, rigged 
out for anything from a chipmunk to a bear, 
started off an early hour. I had a shooting 
jacket, leggins, shooting cap and a cannon I 
swiped from a place called Spion Ivop. For a dog 
we had one of those long eared flat critters called 
a dashund. I never knew what the dash stood 
for before, but now I know it means all the cuss 
words that a man can cuss and a few over. The 
only thing he bit all day was a calf and it was 
mine. 

My guide was a dandy; he knew all the good 
places for miles around. The first place he took 
me was on the outskirts of the town where we 
each shot seven highballs. Then we went to an- 
other place further in town where we each shot a 
few more. Not being sure as to which place was 
the best we returned to the first where some more 
fell to our deadly aim. ( ' I then tried to shoot a 
horse that was going by under the impression 


GEORGES 
LETTER 5 


that it was a bear, and was only prevented by 
someone saying, “Let’s have another.” I am sure 
glad I did not kill that horse, for if skates are as 
high as some other things here, I would have 
broken the record for the high price on fifty year 
olds, and made Vanderbilt, Whitney and Keene 
look like a kilter in a five dollar jack. 

I have often heard it was a dangerous thing 
to shoot in the woods up here as some one might 
take you for a deer and shoot you. I don’t know 
what I was taken for. a tank, I guess, but I got 
shot all right; not half-shot but entirely so. My 
guide did, too. We wound up by going down to a 
restaurrnt and shooting some welsh rarebits, 
with veal of my calf for the dog, who was under 
the table when I fell on him. I don’t know what 
happened after that but I can tell you one thing, 
our Town Hall is a darned cold place to sleep, 
and they charged me ten dollars and costs for my 
accommodations. 

When I got home my boarders were all wait- 
ing for me and the ladies said, “Well Mr. Bum- 
long, what did you shoot?” 

I said, “Everything.” 

They said, “Will we have some for dinner?” 

I said, “Which will it be, roast high ball, 
boiled gin fizzes or baked martinies?” 

The men boarders said, “All,” and the lady 
consumers, “Oh.” 


Then a man said, “But no fooling, what did 
you shoot?” 

I said, “The guide.” 

“What did he shoot?” 

I said, “Me.” 

One lady said, “Where?” 

I said, “All over.” 

Another said, “Was your gun loaded?” 

I said, “No, but we were.” 

After a while the fellow who lent me the gun 
rolled in. 

He said, “Where is my gun?” 

I said, “I give it up.” 

He said, “What did you give it up for?” 

I said, “Ten.” 

He said, “That gun was a relic of the war.” 

I said, “Well now it is a pledge.” 

While I was getting over my trip three of the 
men boarders came up to my room and we had a 
little game of poker. They play a nice game up 
here and have a bunch of cheap jokes on hand. I 
picked up five one deal by myself and found four 
large handsome eights looking at Papa sweetly* 
I could see my rent money coming to me and no 
trouble to make it. I swelled things up before the 
draw until I could see a chance for my grocer as 
well as the rent man, for the three good things 
came along like a nice little flock of lambs. We all 
drew one card and started in to bet. Finally all 


GEORGES 
LETTER ^ 


GEORGES 
LETTER S 


were sent to the woods but one fat guy who eat 
opposite to me. I felt sorry for him and began to 
wonder if it would pay me to hold his trunk for 
his board, for I could see no chance of his having 
any cash left when I got through with him. At 
last out of the goodness of my heart I called him. 

He said I have a “high temperature.” 

I said, “I know it but what have you got in 
your hand?” 

He said, “That’s what I have, a high tem- 
perature, a royal flush.” 

I never heard a joke I appreciated less. 

Well, Bill, I must close now and go to work 
cutting the bill of fare to make up for that high 
temperature. Hash and fish cakes for the bunch 
until that temperature is normal. Take one for 
me when you meet the rest of the boys, and be- 
lieve me, as ever, 


Yours, 


George. 








I III 23 1903 

















































































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